From: hekunze@barrow.uwaterloo.ca (Herb Kunze)
Subject: Wrestling TidBits - 10/03
Date: 1996/10/04
Message-ID:
X-Deja-AN: 187513638
sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner)
organization: University of Waterloo
newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling
[Wrestling TidBits]
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[ Shiryu ] The WWF's [In Yout House ] was reviewed in this past week's
Observer. In much agreement with my write-up last week, Dave
Meltzer gave the following ratings:
Savio Vega vs. Justin Bradshaw in a strap match *1/4
Jim Cornette vs. Jose Lothario -*
Smoking Gunns vs. Owen Hart & Davey Boy Smith for the Tag Titles **1/4
Mark Henry vs. Jerry Lawler DUD
Undertaker vs. Goldust in a match that must end by pinfall *1/2
Shawn Michaels vs. Mankind for the WWF Title ****3/4
Regarding the main event, he wrote "As he went for the pin, Michaels
strangely got up and started punching Vader for the DQ. My guess is that
Vader was supposed to interfere at the count of two but was a tad bit slow
and they had to improvise. [...] A super match but the weak ending kept it
from being a match of the year."
[ - ] The WWF has [In Your House ] on 10/20/96. This show doesn't feature
Shawn Michaels, so it is anticipated that he will drop the title before
this show, the new champion will get one defence here, and then Michaels
will regain the belt on one of the next two shows. Tentative line-up has:
* Vader vs. Sid
* Undertaker vs. Mankind in a buried alive match, where the loser is the
person dumped into a grave on the set (reminiscent of the Cactus Jack
vs. Vader match at Halloween Havoc years back)
[ Mima Shimoda ] [ - ] WCW has Halloween Havoc 10/27/96. Tentative line-up
has:
* Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage for the WCW Title
* Harlem Heat vs. Scott Hall & Kevin Nash for the Tag Titles
* Ric Flair vs. Giant for the US Title
* Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Dean Malenko for the Cruiserweight title in a two
out of three falls match.
* Jushin Liger vs. El Ultimo Dragon for the eight unified Jr. Titles
* Lex Luger vs. Arn Anderson
* Diamond Dallas Page vs. Eddy Guerrero
Everybody expects Harlem Heat to regain the Tag Titles from Public Enemy
before this PPV; if that doesn't happen then Public Enemy is in the tag
match here. Either way, everybody expects the NWO to get the tag titles and
the US Title here. There is talk that Ric Flair wants to take time off
after this show, but he is still under contract with WCW for two more
years, and with his position right now, it seems doubtful they'll let him
get any extended time off. The "two out of three falls" stipulation has yet
to be announced on TV; ditto the Liger match. Since these are the reasons I
would watch, I hope they become reality.
[ Mima Shimoda ] [ RAW ] this past week continued the flat angle of
introducing new versions of previous WWF gimmicks,
when Razor Ramon II faced Savio Vega in a match that saw Diesel II
interfere. Diesel II looked terrible and Ramon II was not much better. My
opinion of the original guys was not stellar, but it was possible for the
real stars to carry them to a good match. The new guys don't seem to have
that in them. The Observer reports that lots of fans walked out of the
building during Diesel II's and Ramon II's attack of Vega, and that after
the build up the crowd was flat and deflated. "On television they can
sweeten the sound, but I don't know if its salvageable as an angle. After
the show some in WWF were talking about dropping the angle completely, even
before the ratings came in. [...] It appears the end result of this will be
the WWF's main angle, attempting to create its own outside group led by
Ross which will probably include the heels that used to work for WCW like
Brian Pillman, Steve Austin, Vader, along with Razor Ramon and Diesel, if
they can be salvaged, perhaps Mankind, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Faarooq and
others to face Team WWF."
Regarding the ECW/WWF cooperation at the [In Your House ] and on [RAW],
the Observer writes, "The question is where it goes from here. The only
plan originally that McMahon and Heyman made was to do the angle on
the PPV as an attempt to spike the ratings the next night, which obviously
didn't work, nor could it possibly have worked. The PPV was probably only
seen in 100000 or so homes at best, virtually all of whom religiously watch
Raw anyway. If you shoot an angle on Raw or Nitro, which reaches millions,
if done successfully, it can help a buy rate on a PPV. It's a lot more
difficult to do it the other way around because of simple numbers. At least
right now, the ECW audience is too small to make any difference in a
national rating and the nature of what they did pretty well guaranteed that
almost nobody would get it or remember it except the hardcore percentage of
the audience, which is already watching to begin with."
[ Lance Storm ] [ - ] Apparently, Hulk Hogan wanted to piledrive Elizabeth
at Fall Brawl during the post-match melee with Randy
Savage and the NWO, but everybody was too worried to do it. Last night, I
was dubbing some old Saturday Night's Main Event shows, including the break
up of the Mega Powers episode, where Savage pushed Elizabeth aside and
demolished Hogan while Liz was draping herself across Hogan. It was a
little weird to see the opposite of the current angle.
[ - ] Terry Gordy, Dan Kroffat, and Doug Furnas are all reported as going
to the WWF. Gordy will work as a masked wrestler.
[ - ] Super Calo will be out for a little while with an elbow injury.
[ - ] It has been announced in Japan that the incomparable Hiro Hase, who
worked in and booked for New Japan, will wrestle in All Japan in
January. It has also been announced that New Japan heel Masa Chono may be a
new NWO member.
[ - ] [Nitro ] beat [RAW ] on 09/23 with a 3.5 rating (5.2 share) against a
2.0 rating (2.9 share). Nitro's two hour broadcast rating is averaged. This
must be very disappointing for the WWF, since this was the live RAW with
the big build up to the return of Diesel and Razor Ramon. The Observer
writes, "For the past several weeks, ever since the introduction of the
Razor/Diesel angle, the WWF television has reeked of desperation. The TV is
put together constantly begging viewers in every commerical break not to
tune away and leading the viewers along with teases the rest of the show
that end with all the sincerity of a 900 line pitch. It's failed,
miserably, in fact, despite it being for the most part the talk of the
inside of the wrestling industry. The decision making processes. the
constant striving for attention and attempts to be the thing talked about
on Tuesday on the hotlines and internet, the one audience WWF is successful
in being talk about on, is killing its adult audience, and that's the
audience it needs to win on Mondays." The detailed ratings are a click
away.
[ - ] The PPV buy rates of the past six month (year or so) show that the
WWF has an average buy rate of 0.71 (0.67) and average gross of
$1.95-million ($1.71-million), while WCW has an average buy rate of 0.60
(0.54) and average gross of $1.82-million ($1.61-million). The details are
an interesting read.
[ - ] The WWF has Survivor Series on 11/17/96.
[ - ] WCW has World War III 11/24/96. Current plan is to have a 60-man
three-ring battle royal as they did last year, with Hulk Hogan being
stripped of the title and the winner of the match becoming champion.
[ - ] The WWF has [In Yout House ] on 12/15/96.
[ - ] WCW has Starrcade on 12/29/96. The show will be from Nashville.
[ - ] WWW: My home page is at http://barrow.uwaterloo.ca/~hekunze. The
wrestling portion includes this post, tape lists, awards history,
Japanese wrestling stuff, and other things.
[ - ] Videos: I have posted something about the availability of videos. If
you missed it, I'll send it to you in e-mail upon request.
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Thanks to: Masaki Aso.
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E-mail: hekunze@jeeves.uwaterloo.ca